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That must be how the Downtown Brockville Business Improvement Area (DBIA) feels right now on the matter of cutting off tax breaks for vacant businesses.

We will find out later this month whether the DBIA’s persistence leads to the elimination of the city’s vacancy rebate program.

But at least the matter is now getting a hearing, the result of a few factors, DBIA persistence being one of them.

We’ve heard more about vacancy rebates in the past few weeks than ever before, but nonetheless here’s the recap.

The vacancy rebate program gives tax breaks to owners of vacant commercial or industrial properties.

The city currently gives property owners a rebate of 30 per cent of property taxes for vacancies in commercial buildings and 35 per cent for vacant industrial units. Meanwhile, “vacant and excess land” is currently discounted at 30 to 35 per cent of the commercial or industrial tax rate.

Vacancy rebates are estimated to have cost the city an average of $242,000 a year over the past six years.

More recently, the province has allowed municipalities to opt out of this tax break regime, or tailor it to their liking.

In March, city staff put forward a recommendation to opt out of the program, laying out the central argument thus: “Though the vacancy rebate program, on the surface, would appear to assist the commercial and industrial community, it could also be considered as a disincentive for these commercial and industrial businesses to fill their vacancies.”

Council’s finance, administration and operations committee let the matter die on the agenda; none of the committee members opted to move it to the floor for discussion.

Mayor David Henderson said at the time he needed more information. He also rejected the idea a tax rebate gives owners a reason to sit on empty property.

“An empty building does not generate income,” he said.

“If you have an empty store, the fact that you’ve got a 30 per cent rebate on your taxes is not the driver of it being empty.”

That view, as we have since learned, is far from unanimous.

Meg Plooy, the DBIA’s executive director, and her downtown colleagues feel otherwise, and in the past few weeks have managed to pull off a relatively rare feat: They got councillors to reconsider an idea they had recently brushed off.

The finance committee is now expected to take up the matter again on Tuesday, with a final vote a week later on whether to pull out of the rebate program or alter it through such things as restrictions or lower rebates.

The persistence of the downtown association, which historically has had a significant beef with absentee landlords, is clearly one factor in taking this idea from the obscurity of outright dismissal to the brink of realization.

But other factors also played a role in this legislative revival.

For starters, there’s been something of a snowball at the provincial level.

When city corporate services director David Dick first brought the matter to the finance committee in March, he was aware of only one other community looking into scrapping the rebates, Port Hope.

Now, Dick’s most recent report on the matter notes that, not only has Port Hope voted to remove the program, but a host of others, including Gananoque, Smiths Falls, Peterborough, the County of Lambton, London and Sarnia are considering phasing out, scrapping or amending their vacancy rebate programs.

Ottawa, meanwhile, has already opted to phase out the program, while Prescott council wants to reduce the Fort Town’s rebate next year and end it entirely in 2018.

Other municipalities across Ontario are also looking at changing or eliminating their rebate programs. The idea has clearly gained political momentum since staff first brought it forward – a momentum influenced by the July 1 deadline for the measure.

Yet another factor can best be summed up by one reader’s reaction on Twitter: “So suggestion. Go forward with taking away (tax) rebate on vacant properties... to help your loss of P&G.”

So suggestion. Go forward with taking away tx rebate on vacant properties... to help your loss of P&G. https://t.co/StrsQAiqch